The word ‘feminist’ has ugly connotations, so much so that I often hesitate before pointing out gender inequities. Does it do any good to state the obvious, given that it is unlikely to rectify injustice, and indeed risks riling up, or boring, those who are just not bothered by that sort of thing?
For some reason, my system refuses to become sensitized. It rankles every single time. Every time I turn the pages of a newspaper and see that the majority of serious stories are about men, maneuvering for positions of power in government, finance, business and sport. Every time I read the statistics about how women still almost universally receive lower pay than their male counterparts for doing the same job. Every time I switch on a BBC quiz or comedy show and see that the three people arrayed on either side of the host are all, or nearly all, men.
It gets worse when we venture into science. Let’s leave aside the obvious figures about the scarcity of female scientists above the post-doctoral level. I’d like to focus on the public face of science. It bothers me every time a science documentary employs all or mostly male scientists as expert talking heads. Every time ‘the best’ science bloggers are published, and most of them are male. Every time I run my eye down a long-list of science book prize candidates and see one women, or page through a science magazine and see that few of the pundits are women, or listen to a science podcast and hear only men’s voices, or watch science programs on TV and see mostly male presenters.
What rankles me most of all are cases when, instead of getting a few female scientists to join with their male counterparts on the quiz show, panel or magazine, the producers prefer to ask male celebrities who have become known for being “science-y” even though, actually, they might have only done a science degree long ago, or have written a book featuring a bit of science – or have just confessed to being a little bit “geeky” because that’s rather trendy at the moment. The message is clear – it doesn’t matter who fills those slots, as long as they’re well-known (and, possibly, male, though that’s not as clear, as I’ll discuss in a moment).
I think we can agree that in the world of popular science, women are largely invisible. I have, of course, heard the usual arguments: there really aren’t any well-known female scientists. Well, except X, Y and Z, who get trotted out again and again as if they are the only interesting, talented and articulate women in the country. Where is the female Stephen Hawking, the female David Attenborough, the female Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Martin Rees, Brian Cox? Why is nearly every up-and-coming television science presenter (who doesn’t even have to be a practicing scientist) a man? Why does no one seem to care about the opinions of female scientists, or female non-scientists with past science credentials, or think that audiences wouldn’t want to listen to them?
I suspect the answer is not deliberate sexism. I suspect that it is all down to the cult of celebrity, and that men are just better at becoming famous in traditionally male-dominated fields like science. Given a choice between filling a seat with an unknown female scientist or a non-scientist rock star, anyone worried about audience numbers is always going to go for the celeb. You could also argue that science needs all the glamor it can get, so it would be madness not to snag a famous comedian if you can swing it, to make your production more palatable to the masses. I respect these reasons, but I don’t think it has to be this way.
And this is why: there is no such thing as a celebrity who did not take his first step out of obscurity. Physicist Brian Cox may right now be the most sought-after talking scientist head in Britain, but there must have been a time when someone took a punt and gave their platform to an unknown quantity. I assume that, for whatever reason, unknown male scientists are more likely to push themselves into the spotlight than their female counterparts – so if an insightful or broad-minded producer or editor wants to discover the next female Brian Cox, he or she needs to give them a hand up. If you don’t put any thought into the line-up of your program, you’ll just end up with the usual bunch of men.
The non-scientific media can occasionally be good at this. I’m thinking of something like BBC News Night Review, which often features obscure young female pundits on the sofa next to their established regulars. Someone, in this case, is obviously putting some effort into researching, approaching and fostering new talent. Alternatively, established male scientist pundits might occasionally recommend articulate and outgoing female colleagues to their producer contacts. All it takes is a little thought, and a little extra work. I know scores of fabulously funny and insightful women scientists and science-related folk who could genuinely engage with a broader audience, whether in print or broadcasting: why do we seldom hear from these people?
I guess the more important question is this: is it actually a problem that our ambassadors for science are all or mostly men, as long as they are talented and the message gets across? Some people don’t think so: for example in a recent Twitter exchange about the absence of women on the inaugural episode of the podcast Strange Quarks, although Martin Robbins expressed regret, Alice Bell tweeted “…I’m not too fussed abt numbers tbh, it’s quality + context around these things that matter”, although she also allowed “I think it’s worth noting big gap like that b/c often people don’t think to ask.”
But I’m afraid it is problem for me, because I do know these wonderful but obscure female colleagues who would love the chance to reach a broader audience, and the glaring injustice overshadows everything else. It might also be a problem for young women interested in science, who have little more than starving models, footballers’ wives and singers in rehab for role models and who see or hear little recognizable as themselves in the science-related media.
I don’t know. Is noticing the gap and appreciating what may be the perfectly valid reasons behind it, as Alice suggests, enough, or do we actually want to change things? It is important to stress that I am not advocating getting mediocre women involved for the sake of looking balanced: that’s anathema to me. I am stressing that I would like to see more excellent women, women who are as good or better than the men that routinely appear, involved in the science media world. They exist, and many of them are willing. If they don’t put themselves forward into a world where they can see little or nothing like themselves, can you blame them? Would getting more women involved break the vicious circle of no women being routinely seen leading to no women worthy of being asked, because nobody knows who they are, or even notices their absence?
I think it just might. Why don’t we do the experiment?
I agree! There’s a huge gap in women in sciences in general, not just the science in the media. I wrote this article http://alexandrajellicoe.com/2010/10/23/science-is-sexist/ just to stimulate a bit of debate as to the reasons why. Apart from the more straight forward sexism which is rife in science. It was v controversial though, particularly in the States!
I’ve been a ‘talking head’ and also working with production companies for years discussing ideas for science programming and it is a painfully slow process – perhaps this puts alot of girls off?
Alex
http://www.alexandrajellicoe.com
Ok, to give some context to the context I was referring to, here’s a paper on the subject I read this week http://pus.sagepub.com/content/19/5/609.abstract
I haven’t quite got around to blogging it yet, want to check with some of the people quoted in it if they mind me re-quoting, but you should have access to the journal via UCL, so you can read it yourself.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m saying that I have additional interests on this issue above (just) numbers and that there are contextual issues behind such numbers (e.g. women not accepting requests. I assume you do too.
(was tempted to say you were quoting me out of context, but think it was me quoting myself – problems of trying to shrink a point to 140c and all that…).
Sorry, Alice – it sounded as if you were stressing that as long as the pundits were talented and there were valid reasons for women not being included (the ‘complexity’ you mentioned), you weren’t too fussed. I definitely respect this opinion, but do not share it at all. I think it’s worth being angry if that can somehow mobilize some sort of positive action that could lead to change.
I very much forward to reading your blog post on this issue!
As mentioned on other occasions when discussing this topic (I agree totally with this excellent post, by the way), it is a very common excuse that women won’t write – Nature is fairly poor at commissioning reviews, essays, etc from women cf men. One always gets the same two excuses – there aren’t obvious female candidates, and if there are, women disproportionately decline (I have actually heard it said on several occasions that the pool of good women is small so they get asked to do more things per person and get too busy).
I don’t buy any of it and I agree that women are shamefully under-represented as spokespeople for science in the media and in journal commissioned articles. Sadly, this is not limited to science. (I recently read a survey of book reviews in the main newspapers, in which there was a huge bias – males review books by males, males review females, females review females — but females rarely review books by males. Why????? Don’t answer that. From memory, the survey was not limited to UK publications.)
I think it’s really important to have science communicators of both genders. Not because of ‘balance’, the test should be talent and effectiveness in communicating the message. It’s because of the cumulative and insidious effect of seeing mostly male communcators. In itself it sends the messages ‘women not needed here’ and ‘women’ not bright enough.
My son recently went to Space School at Leicester Uni. He had fantastic science role models of both genders, loved the experience and learnt loads. He has a more balanced view of the equality of talent distribution than many of his peers (both male and female) here in rural Wales because of this and his home environment. I think that’s healthy.
There are some good examples where the balance appears down to talent. I’ll give one example to illustrate: if you listen to The Naked Scientists you’ll hear presenters and interviewees of both genders. It’s topical, interesting and gender neutral – in the best possible way.
Thanks for your comment, Maxine. I think it’s worth mentioning that there is some difference between the commitment involved in writing, say, a major article (can takes weeks) or being asked to be a guest on a recorded radio programme (about a 2 hour time commitment plus travel). or being filmed as a talking head in the lab saying something intelligent on someone’s science documentary (about a 2-3 hour time commitment, plus getting clearance from the institute), or appearing on an informal live panel (maybe a half hour preparing what you might want to say, plus the time of the event itself). There are many types of contributions that pundits can make and I don’t believe that all of them are impossible in a modern woman’s schedule. After all, busy men seem to have the time.
Thanks Carl – our comments crossed just now. Yes, the more informal broadcast media does a great job at gender balance – The Pod Delusion is another fine example. It may be because they don’t have to worry about audience numbers as do the BBC – these programs are grass-roots, so they won’t get axed if not enough people don’t tune in because you haven’t managed to score Robin Ince or Bill Bryson.
I once got into a public spat with Vivienne Parry on this topic. She argued that when the media, broadly speaking, approached women they were much more likely to get turned down than by men. So even when women were asked for views they were apparently ‘hesitant’ to give them. I have to assume this is accurate, but I think she was largely referring to situations where an instant response was wanted, rather than the long-planned programmes such as quiz shows etc that you mention. She wanted to say it was the women’s fault, I believe the media could try harder to find appropriate women. The spat certainly was one factor in turning me from someone who avoided the media at all costs (because, like so many scientists, I had had bad experiences with talking to journalists who then misquote, over-hype etc) to one who is happy to engage, at least in some situations. However, maybe Vivienne was right and too many women say no first and regret it afterwards.
There are just too many reasons why women should stand up and be counted in science, which we could rehearse for a long time – but the bottom line is clear. There are women scientists out there, who could become celebs, but perhaps we have to make it easy for the producers to find us.
I wonder if you also get what I call the Football Difference showing up. If you look at boys’ football, you see that even very young footballers vastly outplay girls, basically because the boys have spent so much time practising. It’s not quite the same, but I suspect that more airplay leads to …more airplay. Women who might be absolutely great with some experience or coaching don’t get considered.
Jennifer, have you ever seen this article, which makes the argument that women are too smart and rational to choose careers in science?
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
The "role modelling" aspect you mention is the thing that worries me – though, judging by the proportion of female undergrad and postgrad students in our bioscience programmes (somewhere above 50% in both cases), there is no intrinsic problem at the early recruitment stage.
Anyway, agree 100% that it would be good to see more women in the "out-front" roles. I think we discussed this before with with particular reference to bloggers.
And speaking personally, I find the repeated appearances of the same old suspects in the media and "public science" arena rather dull – after I’ve heard someone do their spiel a couple of times, I rarely want to hear it again…! I can see that certain things, like fronting entire programmes, require a particular set of talents, and that "known quantities" thus have a big inside track – but for general stuff, I am always a bit depressed how narrowly the mainstream media net is cast. Radio is actually a bit of an exception, but TV and the newspapers seem depressingly dependent on the same old faces/voices.
The one aspect where I could see Vivienne Parry’s remarks containing a bit of truth is women on-the-rise-but-not-quite-secure-at -the-upper-end-of-the-profession not wanting to be seen to be in any way “non serious”, and therefore perhaps turning things down. One thinks of that old line about having to be x % better to get to the same point as a woman/ minority, and thus also perhaps having to be acutely sensitive to how things one does might get portrayed.
Jenny Rohn said: "the more informal broadcast media does a great job at gender balance – The Pod Delusion is another fine example"
The Pod Delusion don’t do that well at all – the last two episodes have three women between them, and at least a couple in the last several have been all-male.
Personally I fundamentally agree that I’d like to see more female pundits, but I’m failing miserably, and it’s frustrating the hell out of me. I realize this will now read like a set of excuses, and I don’t claim I’m doing brilliantly or that I couldn’t do better, but here goes:
The guest reports we run on Strange Quarks, rely on people coming forward and committing to doing something. I put the word out (usually not too overtly since I don’t want floods of people), and men came forward, women didn’t. In two or three cases I’ve specifically approached women, but only one of them has agreed so far, and then reluctantly after a bit of badgering on my part, and I simply don’t have the time to relentlessly pursue people to do these slots – the first seven decent people are in, whether they’re men, women, children, whatever.
So currently the ratio stands at five men to one woman, and I’m genuinely at a loss as to what I can practically do to redress the balance. If women reading this want to do a 5 minute guest report for the show on an aspect of pseudoscience or evidence-based policy or fringe-science-beliefs then for the love of Sagan e-mail me at [email protected]
Basically all of the above applies to guest blogging too. Women don’t put themselves forward, and they do disproportionately decline, I don’t entirely know why but often the reason cited is lack of confidence or believe in ability. I’ve lost count of the number of times people say "I wouldn’t be good enough," and again I simply don’t have time to constantly badger/harass/persuade those people. Again, [email protected] if you want to guest blog.
The main interviews on Strange Quarks are tougher. We need reasonably high profile guests to get the show off the ground, but if you pick a topic like libel reform you end up with Simon Singh, if you do something on conspiracy theories you end up with Jon Ronson or David Aaronovitch In spite of that I’m hoping to end the series with a ratio of about 7-5, and while you complained about the first episode having 2 men, episode 2 very nearly had Petra Boynton and Rebecca Watson on it! We’re always open to suggestions for interesting guests, so e-mail us at [email protected] people.
@Martin – I wasn’t meaning to poke at you by using your new venture as an example – as I tried to stress, I recognize that there are sometimes valid reasons women don’t appear. But to use myself as a personal example, I would have been happy to do something for your podcast, but you didn’t approach me, and if I’m not approached, I do actually assume I’m not wanted (these sorts of programs tend to be lined up way in advance, so without an inside track on knowing that people were needed, I’d have had no way of knowing.) Of course it’s possible you wouldn’t want a contribution from me for reasons of talent/profile, but that’s a separate issue.
Profile of course makes a huge difference. I was recently bumped from all-male lineup on a science program because a male star (non science-y as far as I know, but very famous) expressed interest. There is no way to get around the hurdle of women who actually quite fancy getting involved but are not being able to compete with established faces – how to break in if you are never given your first moment? I know quite a few women in this situation.
Athene - I agree with you that there are different levels of response, and comfort levels. I do frequently give my snap opinion in media interviews, but it has taken time and practice to feel more comfortable about this (as Alison points out). Science Is Vital was a very useful exerience in this regard; I have a lot of experience talking about science in culture, and about research in my field, but not so much about politics. </p>David – thanks for the link; I’m aware of that issue and sort of agree with parts of it, but this post is not about women in scientific careers – it’s about pundits.<p>
I won’t deny there is still inequality, but don’t think women aren’t making significant headway. As a non-scientist whose boyhood enthusiasm for science has been reawakened by some great science outreach, many of the best blogs and podcasts I consume are coming from women: Pamela Gaye; Petra Boynton; Rebecca Watson and the Skepchicks; Christie Wilcox. These are great communicators doing heroic work.
By far the best children’s TV science programme right now is Nina and the Neurons, produced by Lucille McLaughlin and presented by the excellent Katrina Bryan.
The only NASA scientist I know by name is Carolyn Porco.
I think it’s a little unrealistic to be looking for the female David Attenborough or Stephen Hawking – these men got their breaks at a time when women were almost totally excluded. If we look at the younger generation, while things are by no means as good as they could be, the situation is improving.
@martin – sorry, forgot to add that I don’t listen to Pod Delusion every week (sorry James, if you’re reading this!!) but the ones I’ve heard have been fairly balanced. From the mailing list responses, I got the impression a lot of pieces were by women. They also seem enthusiastic about me appearing on it. Apologies though if I’ve misrepresented your ‘cast at the hands of TPD – I’m glad to hear you’e got lots of women lined up and I very much look forward to future episodes.
Of course I mean Pamela Gay the astronomer, not Pamela Gaye the ice skater. Sorry Pamela!
Jenny: "I wasn’t meaning to poke at you"
Oh absolutely, didn’t think you were!
Jenny: "I would have been happy to do something for your podcast, but you didn’t approach me, and if I’m not approached, I do actually assume I’m not wanted"
Well, that’s mostly because I had no idea you’d have been interested! You’re more of a straight science type of person and advocate, and the show is more around pseudoscience and bad policy/media stuff, but of course if you want to be a guest in future then drop me a line about what you’d want to talk about. As for the guest reports, it’s very much up to people to put themselves forward, but all it involves is you recording 5 minutes of stuff on something you’re interested in to do with the themes of the show 🙂
HI Mike – valid points. But can you think of any semi-regular young female scientist presenters on any mainstream (say, BBC) radio or TV programmes? I can’t, though I don’t have a lot of time to listen to broadcasts so am sure I’ve missed some. There’s Kathy Sykes, but she’s not a scientist. Ah – Alice Roberts is one. Still, I’m not doing too well here. Your remark about generations is valid, but a lot of the men I’m thinking of are quite young, and we aren’t seeing a rash of young women. Or at least I’m not – again, I don’t spend many hours watching broadcasts, so could be missing quite a few.
Don’t worry, Jenny, Martin R hasn’t asked me either, and I’m actually a man…
Or at least, I was last time I checked.
FYI Kathy Sykes has a PhD in Polymer Physics – I think she qualifies as a scientist!
Heh. Actually I’m more amused that anyone would think that I’m "straight science", with the vast majority of my punditry being about science/culture/fiction/art/lab lifestyle/stereotypes. I’ve never blogged about research results in my life.
But I guess this is the point. There are lots of interesting voices out there, but most don’t know them because they aren’t known – the vicious cycle again.
Kathy Sykes is definitely a scientist, as Athene says. Her TV shows do, though, exemplifty some of the pitfalls of the media arena. The Rough Science programmes were great, but the two series she did on Alternative Therapies/Medicine were somewhat dire (IMHO) – showing that once you become a science talking head there is definite danger in getting tempted into fronting stuff away from your area of particular expertise. A critique of the Alternative Medicine series is on David Colquhoun’s blog here.
Sorry Athene, Austin – it’s a nomenclature issue. I meant ‘practicing scientist’.
Yes, I remember the whole Alt Med debacle. Heard KS and her producer defending the one on the faith healing ‘experiment’ at Cheltenham – when the actor plaing the faith healer managed to heal just as well as the professional healer, instead of concluding that it was a classic example of placebo effect and faith healing wasn’t efficacious, the producer (if I recall correctly) claimed that in being trained to act like a faith healer, the actor had actually learned how to do it properly, so the experiment was a success. I found it odd that KS didn’t try to refute that hypothesis. I have liked some of KS’s programs, though – but wish she had come across as more critical in the Alt med series. We can never know, though, how she was steered/edited by producers/directers, can we?
Seem to recall Edzard Ernst did a good study on "remote faith healing" with the "actor control", but also with it being done through a 2-way mirror in the actual specific session where the energy healing was supposed to occur. In his one the actors were told to count backwards from some large number in their heads in multiples of seventeen, or something – the point being they couldn’t then be "accidentally" focussing healing energy (ho ho) if their minds were otherwise engaged.
But like you say, odd that KS would NOT take the sceptical position. Certainly David Colquhoun (and Simon Singh and others) all felt the programmes were much too credulous and uncritical.
Agreed about producers and directors, but it comes back to your central point, I think. I would have said that KS was clearly the wrong person to be the scientist person fronting those Alternative Therapy series, because she didn’t have the right/relevant background and expertise to spot when she was being flim-flammed. But one wonders what other female scientist/personality there was they could have used…?
Well, a medical doctor would have worked just as well. But I don’t know if there are any female medic personalities. Still, these sorts of presenters always have to have a "first" programme. As I mention in my post, nobody turned away Kevin Fong or Adam Rutherford or Brian Cox their first time because they hadn’t presented tv before. I am trying to make the case for giving female newbies the chance to shine in a debut, as male newbies frequently are.
Jenny, there’s a simple argument that says Brian Cox aquired a certain amount of media savvy from his "earlier career":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Ream. This could be one reason why he is now a successful media scientist.
I actually thought the rock star jibe in your main post was aimed directly (but unfairly) at him. Seems like it possibly wasn’t.
Mike – no, no, no, not at all, you’ve completely misunderstood me. Cox is a well-respected and eminent practicing scientist and deserves all the kudos he receives for his media work. I didn’t actually know that he used to be in a band. (I’ve edited the blog post so that this point is now clearer – sorry for the confusion.) I am NOT denigrating any of the men I’ve mentioned as examples in this blog post. It is not their fault that the people running these shows are not looking further for talent.
My jibe about rock stars was referring to producers’ tendencies to fill up guest slots on science programs with non-scientist celebs. It seems strange to me to shoe-horn in people who have nothing to do with science into a science show when there are so many interesting scientists out there. They do it for the ratings – and possibly because deep down they fear that unadulterated science is just not interesting enough. I understand this, but it still seems somehow backwards.Why have a science program at all if you have a subconscious ambivalence about its entertainment value?
Yep – I understood your points better reading through the comments. And I agree with many of them.
While it has nothing to do with science, I will add that 100% of the current presenters of Radio 4’s News Quiz are female.
Mike, glad we’ve cleared that up. Yes, I do listen to Radio 4 and I’ve noticed that some programs seem to have good share of female voices. Because I only have time to listen while making the occasional dinner, I only hear a subset of what’s on offer – which includes the Archers. 😉
"Podcasts":http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fricomedy are the future. It’s like an agricultural society for your ears.
No argument from me. I miss the Now Show podcasts – used to make me howl with laughter on the Tube, everyone staring at me like I was a madwoman.
Heh. By that definition, Jenny, none of the editorial staff of Nature (or the other Big Three journals) would be a scientist….
Now, I couldn’t possibly comment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of them mightn’t be a touch miffed by that distinction.
A further thought about how much ‘practice’ men and women have: in my department, when we looked at workloads we discovered that women were doing far more outreach than men. Now, going out and talking to schools etc is not the same as sitting on a TV couch, but I think it shows that women are more than comfortable at talking to audiences that aren’t simply a bunch of their peers in a seminar room. Give these women – who are already signed up to the idea of reaching a broad audience – a bit of training in front of a camera, and who knows what stars might emerge.
Austin, when I left research to become a journal editor for that four year period, with no idea I’d ever return to the bench, it never would even have occurred to call myself a scientist. I was an editor. Editors don’t do experiments. There is no shame in calling oneself a "former scientist", but I personally found it a little misleading when Kathy Sykes said, on one of her programmes, "I’m a scientist, so I wanted to get more information" (cut to shots of her interrogating PubMed) – but when you look her up, she’s a professor of sciences and society. This is not to say that while she was a practicing physicist, she wasn’t brilliant at it. But to imply to an audience that someone is at the coal face of a profession when one is in fact not can be quite misleading. There have been other former scientist pundits who play on this ambiguity as well. Why not be straightforward if one is, in fact, now a full-time journalist or writer or science communicator? What harm does it do to come clean about one’s credentials in front of an audience who might not think to look you up? I think it’s actually important for transparency. When you leave research, you surrender, for better or worse, the right to imply that you are still performing that function on a daily basis. This is just a personal opinion, though, and I know others disagree.
Athene, you make an excellent point there. It hadn’t really occurred to me before but it’s true in my institute as well. This sort of reminds me of the whole double standard of cooking. Many women perform the bulk of cooking duties for the household, but usually only the men get to be famous chefs.
Jenny – be careful of logical fallacies. Cooking in the home doesn’t have that much to do with cooking in a professional environment (just ask any chef, male or female, or any domestic household engineer who’s tried cooking in a restaurant). For a very long time, it was only women who wrote books on household cookery (Mrs Beaton springs to mind).
As Athene says, outreach working with school pupils is not the same as being a media talking head/public debater.
Of course you’re right, they are not perfectly analagous. Except in one aspect, which was the one I was thinking of: public engagement/making dinner are important tasks that are often seen as a slog or chore, whereas sitting on a sofa with 15 million viewers/being a celeb chef accomplishes roughly the same thing (science engagement/providing a meal) but with a lot more prestige/glamor/kudos – and let us not forget money – attached to it. This is all I meant to say.
There’s also a higher risk of saying something incorrect under the increased pressure, or being taken out of context, or being put in a farcical debating situation to meet the media’s concept of "balance": I’m thinking about climate change denialists or anti-evolutionists getting equal air-time for their minority and generally scientifically unsupported views.
Perhaps a more suitable analogy could be between medical doctors and nurses. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, the extra pressures and responsibilities associated with one job cab be balanced by benefits somewhere else in that job.
Interesting post Jenny.
I wonder a bit though, in general, if it isn’t that there is a bit of a gap of media attention to "women who are not young and perky, and yet not old and distinguished" [i.e. 30 and 60?] and "men who are in their prime years"? I’m not saying it’s all about sex appeal, but media attention to me seems to have a lot of "sex appeal" and being judged by others… and women are more often than not judged/commented on in a "looker way". Manly geek is ok, woman geek in her 30ies maybe not so much?
That way it would explain if there are more older women scientists who end up in media in a few years? (hope; since there are so many more female undergrads/grads nowadays compared to 20 yrs ago. Although I know, that doesn’t really mean there will be more female professors in the end …)
I don’t know though, maybe this is my pet peeve [women get judged on things not necessarily based on the subject at hand but what have you and you have to be so good in order not to get critiqued/judged as ‘that bad woman’] and I’ve misunderstood it? Although, I have this little nagging feeling it’s hard to find a place for "smart good scientist females who are not perceived as super women but merely ‘a regular smart scientist who happens to be a woman’ "??
It’s an interesting idea, Asa. Though it’s commonly thought that youth is an important commodity for media work, and that this falls disproportionately against older women, it may not hold true in science. This is just an N=1 anecdote, but someone on Twitter, a very talented and articulate young astrophysicist, told me yesterday that a BBC producer told her, to her face, that men wouldn’t want to hear about science from "someone who looked like" her – a young blond woman. Is science too "serious" to be presented by a comely young woman? I wouldn’t have thought men would care, but perhaps there are deeper psychological issues if this anecdote holds true in a more general sense.
Jenny> See, I’ve thought about that too. I agree that media tend to be focused on youth, but that is also more true when it comes to "younger women", whereas men can be older/not as much in their 20ies to get media attention. [back to the movies and pretty much lots of stuff when you look at it… ?]
The "young blond woman"* might not be recieved well from either women or men in regards to the science? I guess I’m too far into my own cynism that "good looking smart women is percived as a threat by many, so it’s safer and easier to go with fairly good looking man talks about science with glasses on". Doesn’t break the stereotype of anyone really…. but it will probably sell papers/get viewers, which is what the main goal is?!
[*something to do with physical attractiveness a and percievence of "being sexy but not the sharpest knife" compared to "being smart and good looking, now really who does she think she is?!"?]
Yes, this lose/lose aspect applies to many things in this sphere – like men who are assertive are assertive, whereas women who are assertive are bitches.
A bit late to this, but I want to add some info cos it seems that people think that it’s really easy for male scientists to just be given a tv programme and be a good presenter.
Brian (Cox) has been presenting tv and radio programmes for 10 years. It would be an extremely rare person, male, female, scientist or otherwise, who could present a landmark series with authority without a huge amount of practice. He didn’t just suddenly pop up a couple years ago fully formed.
Brian was terrible on his first programmes (on a very obscure channel, that no one watched and was not even broadcast in the UK). I (his wife) started presenting in 1992. I spent a lot of time coaching him on his presenting. After every tv appearance, I’d pick apart every little thing he did: "Don’t do that with your hands." "You should stand more like this." "Talk slower." "You looked awkward there." "Sit up straighter." "Don’t wear that again. It looks wrong." "Don’t EVER start a piece to camera with "I’m here…"!" So along with a lot of practice, he had all of the normal bad presenting habits "bullied" out of him!
If you want to have your own tv programme, then you need to actively work (very hard) to try and make that happen. No one is going to call you up out of the blue. You will have to make contact with producers and commissioners (you’ll have to spend months and months bugging them because they definitely won’t want to meet with you), you need to attend seemingly endless meetings (if they’ll even meet with you), you have to come up with a lot of ideas for programmes and talk to everyone about them (they won’t like any of them), you’ll have to do screentests and auditions (and get turned down time and time again)… Getting a presenting role is a full-time job in frustration and rejection! And, yes, Brian went through all that, too.
And even if you’re incredibly lucky and end up getting a talking head interview on Horizon, you’ve got to start all over again with the hard work trying to get the next gig…
So, female scientists, if you want to be on tv (and I agree, you should be!), then you’re going to have to work really, really hard to make it happen. No one is going to just hand it to you… And, I’d be happy to help with your presenting skills… 😉
Thanks for the great insider advice, Gia. I know a few presenters and it doesn’t look like an easy job even when you have made it. It doesn’t solve the mystery of why more women don’t make it, as in my experience in lab shows, they are perfectly willing and able to work the same crazy hours as men to advance their academic careers. Having said that, if women are already overstretched academically and have on top of this, familial or child-care obligations, it sounds from what you say as if even getting started might be an impossible barrier – I wasn’t aware of how much work that might be.
However, this post is just as much about the other, less onerous, ways that I would like in an ideal world to see women contributing: speaking as ad hoc experts on radio and TV, having their opinions sought out for newspaper articles and the like.I know from experience that it doesn’t take long to stroll over to Broadcasting House for a three-minute recorded interview, or to prepare a feature for a major outlet.
Again, Jenny, please be careful with your assumptions. Plenty of academically (over)stretched men have familial and child-care obligations. Especially those whose partners work. This doesn’t necessarily explain the difference in appearance rates.
Several years ago I was on a government initiated committee whose aim it was to try and get girls to think of IT careers as a possible choice for them as well as to get more women in IT in the media as role models for girls. Along with schemes aimed directly at girls, one of the things we did was to gather up a group of women working in various areas of IT – from entrepreneurs to systems managers and everything in between. The idea was that whenever there was an IT story the media was covering, journalists could come to this group to find a (female) pundit. It was fairly successful, though it only lasted for about 2 years…
That may be one way of doing it. Of course, it would have to be done voluntarily – unless somewhere like the RS wanted to sponsor it (no one on the committee I was on got paid, but things like meeting space, tea & coffee, printed materials etc cost a bit) – and could be time intensive for some people… but it’s worth a try….
So you are suggesting that childcare and housecare duties are shared 50:50 across the board amongst academics? These are not the stats I’ve seen. I was not suggesting that no men don’t have the lion’s share of these obligations; I am suggesting that fewer do, which might contribute to the trends. It’s something at least looking into, surely.
As an aside, if you haven’t seen it already, you might enjoy Gia’s piece about keeping Brian in clean pants: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/28/invisible-wife-syndrome-celebrity-relationships . It’s a fair question to ask if he could be so active with a young son if he were doing an equal share of the duties, in my opinion.
Also, please note that in the comment you are objecting to, I was using the hypothetical if to put forward a theory – it wasn’t an absolute assumption. Sorry for any confusion there.
No, Brian couldn’t do what he’s doing if I didn’t take on 100% of the ‘running the house and family’ duties. It has been a very deliberate decision on our part to do this. No, I’m not at all the kind of woman who gets all her satisfaction from doing the laundry! It drives me nuts most of the time, but there is a bigger picture that we have to keep our eye on and that is the promotion of science, getting more kids into science, getting more support for science from the public at large etc. If me taking a few years out to wash his pants means that he’s able to film his programmes, write books, do public talks and inspire more kids, then I’m happy to do that.
As an aside… a couple years ago (pre-Wonders), he did some talks at the Edinburgh Science Festival. The audiences were almost exclusively men, a large percentage were 50+. The last Edinburgh Science Festival his audiences were basically 50/50 men and women and a large number were teenage girls. Hormones are powerful things… 😉
Gia: It was true then. Things could only get better. (I am sooo sorry). I think your experience really shines a light on just how much work it can take for a partnership to get into that position.
Because I try to take as much responsibility as I can at home (though not 50%), I guess I’m doomed to a life of media obscurity. That and my obvious preference for an Ivory Tower (and other heaving-bosom fiction) approach to science.
Jenny: Thanks for clarifying. While I clearly didn’t suggest that…
I suppose a relatively small proportion of academics’ partners are also academics – this immediately complicates any analysis of duty sharing – we need to include a lot of extra factors about what an academic’s partner does: what pressures they face outside of the house, what their job security is like, what their ambitions are… before we can draw any sorts of conclusions about how fairly duties are shared and how this impacts on the visibility of females in the science media.
So, please do show us the statistics that you’ve seen on these things (or at least a link to them would be appreciated). I’d be much happier seeing those than anecdotes. We’re scientists after all, and even though this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed MS, stats would be a much more engaging basis for your theory.
You could also show me the stats that all academic men contribute equally (50% on average) to housework and childcare duties.
The classic British study, of men overall, usually cited is this one: http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/news/2001/07/06/who-does-the-housework ,which does not suggest that 50% of the housework is done by men. MORI also suggests that men (whether in academic or not) are rarely the primary caregiver in a couple: http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=998
I am not aware of more recent studies but I would be surprised if the figure was now 50/50. If it is, I’d be thrilled. Looking forward to seeing your evidence. And please note – if it’s true that it’s still not 50/50, I’m not saying that there aren’t good reasons for the disparity- e.g. salary and other expectations – or even that it’s necessarily "wrong". I’m just presenting it as a possible explanation for women being less likely to have the time to do activities outside of work and home – as one of a number of possible explanations in this complicated issue.
Jenny, I have no reason to
as this was never my assertion. I really don’t understand where you get that idea from. I would also be surprised if the figure was 50/50.
However, from the first link you provided (a press release), and probably of relevance to academic couples,
While I can’t find this yet in a published paper (specifically relating to education), Man Yee Kan is probably an interesting person to look up with regards to these questions.
For example, she shows that estimates of time spent doing household work may be unreliable, here:
(but this doesn’t necessarily mean that men do more than they think they do) and also that
So, once again, 50/50 was never my assertion. But a bit of rapid quote mining of published literature suggests that academic couples might distribute household tasks more equally than others, though estimates can be unreliable.
Awaiting moderation…
Bit late on this, but I was interested by the mention of the News Quiz above – I remember Simon Hoggart (the former host) once saying something along the lines of a woman being rejected (by the producers) from the potential panel one week because there was already a woman on the other team, and two female voices was unacceptable – that at least has changed for the News Quiz, although not for many other panel shows (QI, Mock the Week, and so on…) so there’s a long way to go across the media, not just in science.
And also, at the Frontiers of Science meeting I was at last month, several people commented on the gender balance, which was pretty close to 50:50 across participants, speakers, and the organising committee – largely because we made a conscious effort to achieve that in organising the meeting. Which turned out not to be too hard, and I’m certain that we made no compromises on quality. It perhaps just meant thinking beyond the most obvious suspects in some cases. People really did feel that the meeting had a different (in a positive way) dynamic as a result. (Interestingly, almost all of the senior scientists there, representing the Royal Soc and the Australian Academy of Sciences, were women too, but I think that was just a happy accident!)
Great post, and comments, too, by the way – nice way to ease back into things after a few days away!
Damn, is it the link thing again? How daft. Hang on….:-)
There are loads of legitimate comments in my spam bucket! So sorry, folks – I never think to look there because most platforms notify you when there are comments pending. I’m right in the middle of an expt but will rescue them all as soon as I can. Stupid MT4.
Why is it that many of the real spammers always just can comment straight away with links, without moderation, and users who the system should know are legitimate because they’ve posted before, don’t make the cut? it’s really weird.
[All comments now published – sorry to anyone who got caught in the filter. We are working on a way to "white-list" regular commenters].
@Mike
Here’s an explanation for the logic of my responses to you. I initially speculated that women might have less time than men to do media work in part because they have less free time due to child care and housework duties, on average. I didn’t supply any links because (a) I was speculating in an informal setting, and (b) the assertion that on average women tend to have more duties like this than men is pretty much the departing point for every meeting/paper on women in SET that I’ve come across in the last ten years, and is not usually one that people think is a flawed assumption. It could be I’m completely wrong and this and every couple on average shares all chores equally – but I’ve not seen that study and I’ve heard a lot that suggest the opposite.
But since you said "plenty" of men do lots of childcare, and demanded to see my evidence, I made the logical assumption that you don’t believe, on average, that the work load falls disporportionately on women. Therefore, you must think it’s (a) either 50/50, or (c) that men do more of the chores. If this isn’t what you meant, then that’s fine; but it is how your opinion came across to me.
If you do in fact think it’s possible that women do more chores than men on average, then you might also be persuaded to think that this could be one factor in women doing less media work – the original topic of this discussion. If you think it plays no role at all, that’s interesting too, but I’d like to hear why you think it doesn’t have any effect on the current gender distribution we see.
(BTW, it seems narrative of the comment thread is now hopelessly scrambled because of the late release of some comments – if something doesn’t make sense now (in particular who is responding to whom), that’s why.)
@Gia – I’ve only just seen your comment about the IT initiative, it does indeed sound really great, but if women are already overstretched and it’s unremunerated, it might be difficult to make it work. However I’m glad to hear that at least there was uptake, that this group was actually used. Because you could easily imagine a scenario when they were just ignored.
@Tom I hope that anecdote about the News Quiz is now firmly a thing of the past! I agree that putting a little thought into meetings and contributors can sometimes yield great results. It all depends on whether the editors/organizers think it matters. The argument that "it shouldn’t matter the gender provided they’re the best" is, logically, entirely sound, so it’s so hard to convince oneself that one should deliberately try to subvert this stance. There have been several times when people have asked me to do things, and then confided, "by the way, we really hope you agree because we don’t have enough women." It’s impossible, for me, to not then harbor a suspicion that it wasn’t my talent that actually led to the invitation. So I can see both sides of this argument, but still think affirmative action (provided the women are excellent) is a net positive thing to do.
@Jenny – I agree absolutely that, if (crucially) the editors / organizers think it matters, it’s perfectly possible to achieve an acceptable gender balance without any compromises. One thing that worries me is that any such effort is liable to be labelled ‘affirmative action’ – which it sometimes clearly is, but still, it’s a very loaded term for the the reasons you state. Because for me, it kind of implies that the ‘business as usual’ alternative is simply to identify the best people, and if they’re all men, well, too bad. But I don’t think that the ‘best people’ are necessarily identified by any kind of objective criteria, but rather along the lines of, ‘he was on panel X so would probably be good’, ‘I had a pint with him at conference Y and he seemed like a good guy’, ‘my colleague says he’s a smart cookie’, and so on. Up to and including the old school tie. (Use of ‘he’ throughout is intentional.) When I’ve been in all male meetings, they have usually been set up in this kind of way.
So for me (at least in the, admittedly very restrained context of, for instance, setting up working groups, plenary speakers, etc.), ‘affirmative action’ would simply mean starting with no preconceptions about who is a ‘great guy’, and rather putting some obvious effort into objectively identifying talented people.
Maybe we need a new term for ‘affirmative action’, though. "Creatively realized partity"? Hmmm. CRP sounds a bit too much like "CRAP". 😉
Tom> I guess people were commenting because there was a 50:50 ratio?
I remember seeing a paper in teaching in Sweden where the authors had looked at "classroom time and speaking". All participatants though the ratio was 50:50 between the boys and girls when in reality is was 70:30. When the girls really took up half the time, everyone thought they had "dominated and taken much more time than the boys". I wonder if that is what that News Quiz was talking about…. the percieved notion?
Thanks for unspamming, Jenny. I didn’t come here just to stir things up. However, I don’t expect my comments to be distorted.
I originally said
which bears little relation to your interpretation that I think that men do at least 50% of the household labour. I did not state this, nor insinuate it.
Neither did I "demand" to see your evidence. You followed my comment with your own (ahem) interpretation, claiming that 50-50 were not the stats you’ve seen. I then asked you to please show us those stats. As a practicing scientist who was writing and has written before about gender imbalances and has appeared in the media, I thought you’d be a good person to ask.
Coming from a theoretical background, I realize that (often implicit) assumptions have a huge impact on the results and interpretations of models (hypotheses). I don’t think starting with the assumption that gender imbalance in academic media appearances being due to domestic responsibilities (or anything else) is more reasonable than starting with an assumption of equality. Scientists go out and collect some evidence to back their position up. The first press-release you linked to told us that that highly educated (which I assume academics are) partnerships are linked to less housework hours for women.
The articles I then linked to (which were easy to find) caution against trusting self-estimates of time spent doing housework and that there was no evidence supporting gender-traditional division of domestic labour amongst economically independent women (which I also assume holds for academics, though this is more tenuous).
Martin told us that women disproportionately decline and even included some data. Right now we have evidence to say that the imbalance is explained by this feature, although this doesn’t tell us why they refuse. But still, there’s no evidence yet to assume it’s because they do more household duties.
Gia explained that (i) she has had to sacrifice her career (which I understood to be in the media, not academia) to help her partner’s media presence and (ii) he has to sacrifice his family life. There may be interesting gender differences in the approaches to these 2 factors that can help us understand imbalances in the final product.
So, while I never stated that I believed that domestic duty is shared 50-50, I remain open to being convinced (on a scientific level) that academic women do more domestic chores than academic men. And the little information you provided or I found suggests that there’s not much evidence supporting this assumption. At the moment it’s just as valid to assume that there is no difference (or that men do more), until there is evidence to the contrary. So it’s not yet a useful assumption to include in a hypothesis about why male scientists appear more often in the media. If you can show me some evidence to support this assumption, I’ll be very happy to see it.
I am interested in the reasons behind gender imbalances across society, including within science, which is why I’m still here. I happen to think that in 20 years, without affirmative action (aka positive discrimination, CRAP), we will probably see a straight gender shift in the biological sciences, following the necessary cohort effects. But I think it’s a far more interesting topic to deal with scientifically than speculatively.
Gahhhhhh – now all the links from my last post have disappeared. I’ll repost, please delete the last version, Jenny.
Thanks for unspamming, Jenny. I didn’t come here just to stir things up. However, I don’t expect my comments to be distorted.
I originally said
which bears little relation to your interpretation that I think that men do at least 50% of the household labour. I did not state this, nor insinuate it.
Neither did I "demand" to see your evidence. You followed my comment with your own (ahem) interpretation, claiming that 50-50 were not the stats you’ve seen. I then asked you to please show us those stats. As a practicing scientist who was writing and has written before about gender imbalances and has appeared in the media, I thought you’d be a good person to ask.
Coming from a theoretical background, I realize that (often implicit) assumptions have a huge impact on the results and interpretations of models (hypotheses). I don’t think starting with the assumption that gender imbalance in academic media appearances being due to domestic responsibilities (or anything else) is more reasonable than starting with an assumption of equality. Scientists go out and collect some evidence to back their position up. The first press-release you linked to told us that that highly educated (which I assume academics are) partnerships are linked to less housework hours for women.
The articles I then linked to (which were easy to find) caution against trusting self-estimates of time spent doing housework and that there was no evidence supporting gender-traditional division of domestic labour amongst economically independent women (which I also assume holds for academics, though this is more tenuous).
Martin told us that women disproportionately decline and even included some data. Right now we have evidence to say that the imbalance is explained by this feature, although this doesn’t tell us why they refuse. But still, there’s no evidence yet to assume it’s because they do more household duties.
Gia explained that (i) she has had to sacrifice her career (which I understood to be in the media, not academia. I could be wrong) to help her partner’s media presence and (ii) he has to sacrifice his family life. There may be interesting gender differences in the approaches to these 2 factors that can help us understand imbalances in the final product.
So, while I never stated that I believed that domestic duty is shared 50-50, I remain open to being convinced (on a scientific level) that academic women do more domestic chores than academic men. And the little information you provided or I found suggests that there’s not much evidence supporting this assumption. At the moment it’s just as valid to assume that there is no difference (or that men do more), until there is evidence to the contrary. So it’s not yet a useful assumption to include in a hypothesis about why male scientists appear more often in the media. If you can show me some evidence to support this assumption, I’ll be very happy to see it.
I am interested in the reasons behind gender imbalances across society, including within science, which is why I’m still here. I happen to think that in 20 years, without affirmative action (aka positive discrimination? or CRAP), we will probably see a straight gender shift in the biological sciences, following the necessary cohort effects. But I think it’s a far more interesting topic to deal with scientifically than speculatively.
Gia> I just read your artcile. Interesting to read about the move to "Mrs famous", or the feeling of that anyway. And that sentence about being referred to as "his friend" after the photo was taken, that lingers… strangely enough but it is one of those small details to point out that "reality or good researching about the person writing about isn’t what sells papers – more like easy fixes".
Mike, sorry about the spam control – I can’t explain why that’s happening and don’t seem to have any control over it.
I should not have got into this discussion with you on day when I could not afford to spend more than a few quick moments thinking or replying to your comments – I have been in the middle of a day-long experiment all day. I unreservedly apologize if I unintentionally distorted you, and that my explanations of why I responded (in good faith) the way I did to how your words were, actually, coming acrossto me personally, did not make sense to you. I’m sure it was just my haste.
If you say there’s no evidence for gender imbalance in this area, and you have had time to look and can’t find it, I’m happy to concede the point that the male partners of all academic professional women on average probably do 50% or more of all childcare and household chores. I suspect my institute, and all the institutes of my close female friends, and all the places I’ve worked in the past five years, have been exceptions to this rule – I hear overwhelmingly otherwise, but with such a small sample size (maybe 50 colleagues overall), that’s eminently possible. So let’s assume women have just as much time as men to do media work, and strike the work/life balance possibiility from the list of hypotheses.
I’d love to hear other ideas if it’s not down to free time.
Oh – just want to stress to my other readers, I’m perfectly happy for people to speculate here without hard evidence. We’re just having a brainstorm.
Jenny, I’m having a tough time formatting with NN these days. It probably has nothing to do with your control, or lack of.
And as you’re understandably busy (I’m running simulations today, so at least my computer’s busy), I’ll try to be more succinct:
That’s still not what I’m saying – although it probably got lost in my lengthy comments. I’m saying I have not found evidence (c.f. anecdotes) to understand if this actually is a pattern, never mind a factor. I didn’t spend long looking and found evidence of no evidence.
However, it may be there if one looks harder. And as we all know, just because there is a difference in this factor, it still doesn’t directly follow that this explains the differences in media presence. We’d have to actually test that as well rather than relying on the simple correlation, especially if you actually want to fix the problem.
If you read back to what I wrote, I never claimed that lack of time was definitely the main reason there aren’t more women in media, nor even that it was definitely one of the many possible reasons. I was merely putting the idea out there for discussion. I don’t fully reference all of my comments on this blog because I assume I’m amongst friends and I assume that when I use hypotheticals and speculate, people can see that’s what I’m doing. I would love to have the time to do thorough and scholarly research on every issue tangential to the main post, but I simply don’t. I have conceded the point to you, and I’m now assuming that free time is probably not the reason unless anyone finds evidence otherwise, so perhaps we could move on to something else.
I’m not sure if anyone pointed out this article that came out in the Guardian yesterday. Jennifer, it seems you are one of the candidates to take on the role of "female Brian Cox".
Will y’all please stop saying "female Brian Cox"?
It’s not helpful, to anybody.
@Richard: I agree. Completely.
I used it in my comment because I was quoting from the the title of the piece I linked to ("Where’s the female Brian Cox?"). Presumably the Guardian editors didn’t think that "Where’s the same-sex role model for young girls studying science?" had quite the same ring to it.
Thanks Barbara 🙂
I know about tabloid headlines, but am really concerned that people who should know better seem to be propagating the meme without engaging higher brain functions. And without quote marks.
I don’t mind the phrase, Barbara. Might as well call a spade a spade.
Yes, I saw that article and found it great, though a little embarrassing. I just want to stress that my post was meant to be general – I’d love to do more punditry work than I do now, but doubt I’d have the time for full-on TV work. I’m actually quite entranced by the radio stuff I’ve done. Maybe TV as a one-off, but my friends who are TV presenters don’t seem to have the time to do other stuff I think is important, like write books or spend a lot of time with their loved ones.
It’ s interesting that in the article about the (dreadful phrase) female Brian Cox, the alumna cited from Camden School for Girls was Emma Thompson, rather than a scientist or at least someone who was in a more intellectual sphere such as Frances Crooke or Lucy Kellaway. (Wikipedia gives a list of well-known Old Girls; at least Alom Shaha didn’t use that list to cite Geri Halliwell or the daughters of several politicians who aren’t even famous in their own right!). As an alumna of that school myself I couldn’t help noticing, but I think it says too much about what celebrity is all about. It is about the status of being a celebrity. If I were you Jenny, I’d see if you can grab the media crown.